The Top Six Innovation Ideas of 2011

That’s right. 2011. These six ideas emerged in 2010 as powerful “innovation invitations” and seem sure to intensify in power and influence. They’ll increasingly be a source of, and resource for, innovation differentiation in 2011, if not for your organization, then for the firm you most dread competing against.

Anyone who has an iPhone, iPad, or Kindle knows that media are no longer created merely to be viewed — content is designed to be touched, tapped, stroked, fingered, fondled, and pinched. Interfaces have gone tactile and haptic. The keyboard isn’t dead or dying, but it’s lost pride of place in defining onscreen interaction. Where professionals once wrote memos to be read, 2011 begins an era in which documents are written with touch both in mind and on fingertips. Designing documents to be a sensual physical experience and not just a visually cognitive one demands different aesthetics and sensibilities. This nascent transition will be as profoundly important for future interpersonal communications — and branding — as the transition from radio to television. Having the right touch to get the right touch will become a desirable communications competence.

3. WWWabs

If you explore their websites, you’ll find American Express, Google, Intuit and scores of others have “labs” — not-quite-ready-for-prime-time alpha and beta versions of apps to explore and test. These innovation playgrounds vary wildy in quality, creativity and breadth. A few of these test-tube innovation babies are quirkily weird; others have the glimmer of interactive genius. These WWWabs will undoubtedly be reshaped by the seemingly irresistible rise of Facebook as an advertising and promotional vehicle. Indeed, Facebook’s role as a third-party innovation platform is still a work in process. However, the economics of experimentation for both customer-facing and internal WWWabs is undeniably favorable. It’s easy to marry a WWWabsite with a contest, for example. More important, WWWabs symbolize the substantial shift in one of the dying innovation anachronisms of the post-industrial era. That is, the importance of “research & development” to business innovation. WWWaboratories are about the real future of virtual value creation. Instead of R&D, what matters is E&S — Experiment & Scale. WWWabs go mainstream worldwide next year.

4. That’s Quite A Coup, Onward Group!

Google’s failed effort to acquire Groupon for a reported $6 billion (!) obscures the tectonic economic shift in global retail. Devices of all kinds have gone from advertising, branding, and marketing media to promotional platforms. The coup is in a new genre and generation of trackable couponing. Coupons have been redeemed as a “class” not just “mass” vehicle for luxury and high-status items as well as for everyday brands and staples. Digital coupons aren’t just “smart,” they can be “brilliant” — linked to recommendation engines, GPS, supply chains, etc. Once significant distinctions between coupons, coops, discounts, and promotional currencies are blurring into nothingness. Indeed, we’ll see “pick your preferred promotion options” in Android and Apple apps next year. Facebook, Foursquare, and Twitter will dramatically expand both the reach and ingenuity of their promotional partnerships. Advertising will take a backseat to promotional offers as retailers and brand managers alike collectively decide that branding a promotion matters just as much as promoting a brand. Next year will be the first year that almost half of all American and European shoppers have a digital coupon in their device almost half the times they shop.

5. From Farmville to Pharmville: We Got Game in Business

I don’t like Farmville or Call of Duty but tens of millions of loyal players do. The Kinect interface has made Microsoft as culturally cool with gamers as Halo once did. The Kinect’s hackability has made that system even more appealing. Which means that, finally, social media-oriented games will finally cross the great divide from the living room and teenager’s bedroom into the workplace. There will be a Farmville counterpart or equivalent that becomes a welcome teaching and/or business simulation and learning tool in the enterprise. Unlike the Sims or SimHealth (which I once thought would be the gateway to enterprise gaming), the pervasiveness and growing acceptance of social media as an adult activity makes an adult business simulation game a probability instead of a possibility. The emergence of haptic, tactile, and gestural interfaces similarly boosts the opportunities for adult-oriented games design. Will this new game go viral first in China, Japan, Korea, or Europe before America? I haven’t a clue. Remember, it took over five years for texting to catch on in America. But the companies that succeed in gameifying their products, services, and brands will enjoy a certain Zynga in their step.

6. A Beautifully Designed Lobby

America remains the world’s largest economy by far. But this is a country confronting fundamental changes in the largest sector of its economy (healthcare), the most troubled sectors of its economy (housing and finance), as well as big-ticket sectors such as energy, education and telecommunications. No matter which way a CEO turns, she faces the spectre and shadow of increased government regulation and/or oversight. Europe faces comparable challenges as the EU as a monetary union confronts the limitations of the EU as a political project. China isn’t about to deregulate; India’s bureaucratic raj may be loosening its grip on the subcontinent’s marketplace but its influence is unavoidable. In other words, a charismatically innovative lobbyist may have a bigger impact on marketplace success in 2011 than the country’s most savvy technologist or marketer. Even as the global financial crisis — and America’s housing crisis — ever so slowly dissipate, state intervention and involvement in the marketplace is arguably the single biggest gating factor in innovation. From EPA cleantech regulations to net neutrality to marginal tax rates to quantitative easing to currency wars, innovative executives have to pay attention to government behaviors as closely as they do customer behaviors. In 2011, a marginal dollar invested in a lobbying campaign may yield far greater returns than a dollar invested in a brave new technology innovation. Then again, it’s important for businesspeople to have the finest legislators that money can buy. Think of them as part of the global supply chain.

This is my call for the top six ideas to watch next year. Which two of these six themes will matter most next year? What would make it on to your list of top ideas in 2011?